Item 53 - Letter from Donald Tovey to R. C. Trevelyan

1 item

39 Royal Terrace, Edinburgh. - Sends the score of the first act [of "The Bride of Dionysus"]: it takes more than one sitting to 'thrash out the thing without utter fatigue. Four hours of Hedmont nearly killed [Tovey]!'. This act is much the hardest: thinks the rest will be comparatively easy for Trevelyan and Ricketts to get plotted out. Will definitely not be the producer as he would need such precise instructions; the suggestion that he should be 'means that Hedmont, having discovered his own incompetence, wants to shift the blame for it'. Tovey and Trevelyan together might be producers, but he thinks it much better to get a professional person with 'intelligence and knowledge' but also the 'good nature' to see that 'he can't have a free hand and must make the best of a work of which the words, music, times, & scenes, are now rigidly fixed'. They must also remember they have not officially got rid of Hedmont, but Tovey thinks that if Hedmont will not work with a producer chosen by Trevelyan, he 'as paymaster' can persuade Campbell that Hedmont must go unless he can execute orders.